Former Metro Detroit expo center site to see $100 million hotel and office project

NOVI, MI - The former site of the Novi Exposition Center near I-96 and Novi Road is being redeveloped into a $100 million hotel and commercial space, according to multiple reports.

The project is being led by Kevin Adell, president of WADL-TV Channel 38 in Detroit. Plans for development of the 25-acre property call for twin buildings, each having eight to ten floors and measuring about 176,000 square feet in size, the Detroit Free Press reports. Plans call for one building to have a medical center and offices, and for the other to house a hotel

Adell told the Free Press he has been in talk with possible tenants such as Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott and the Cleveland Clinic.

There will also be retail spaces on the first floor, according to Novi Patch. Specific plans for the site should become "more official" in the next 12 to 14 months, one of the developers partnering with Adell on the project told Patch.

In 1992, the 300,000-square-foot Novi Exposition Center was built at the site. It was shuttered in 2005, with its operations moving to Suburban Collection Showplace, and the empty structure that was left was torn down last year.

Adell's father, Frank Adell, originally bought the site in 1952, and developed it a few years later, A water tower there still bears the family name, and development plans call for keeping it as a fixture.